


Where We'll Go

by GoldenTruth813



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Co-Parenting, Conscious Uncoupling, Divorce, Draco Malfoy runs a driving lessons buissness, Getting Together, HP: Epilogue Compliant, Kid Fic, Learning to Drive, M/M, Single Parent Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 06:03:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14326173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenTruth813/pseuds/GoldenTruth813
Summary: Harry needs to figure out how to get around now that he's got 3 kids to handle on his own. Clearly getting Draco Malfoy to teach him how to drive is his only option.





	Where We'll Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aibidil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aibidil/gifts).



> Thank you so much to frnklymrshnkly for the beta!
> 
> Based on an ask aibidil sent me about Harry and getting around with his kids! <3

Harry James-Potter does  _ not  _ like Portkeys. They are for emergencies only, and as far as he’s concerned, his children will not be traveling by them.

Mrs. Weasley tells him Floo Travel is perfectly safe, but Harry distinctly recalls his first experience with it, ending up lost in Knockturn Alley, and Harry will be damned if one of his kids ends up in the wrong grate.

When Harry has  _ one  _ kid it’s easy. He clutches James to his chest and Side-Along’s him everywhere. Ginny recognizes his need for control and always lets Harry do it when they’re going somewhere together. They’d tried it the other way around once, but when Harry’d got to the Burrow and hadn’t immediately laid eyes on James and Ginny he’d had a panic attack wondering if they’d been splinched. Of course, Ginny’d come out of the kitchen a few minutes later smiling, dropping her water, and running to Harry at the sight of him sitting on the grass trying to remember how to breath. Harry always took James after that.

The trouble comes when they’ve got  _ two  _ kids.

“It’s fine,” Ginny says, patting his hand. “I’ll Side-along one of them and you can take the other one.” 

Except there’s this weird part of Harry, this part he doesn’t want to admit out loud, that finds it hard to trust people and magic where his kids are concerned. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Ginny. It’s just that sometimes, well... sometimes Harry doesn’t trust  _ magic _ .

By the time they have Lily, Harry’s nerves about traveling anywhere are a bit frayed because, while it’s possible to Side-Along two kids, it’s not as safe. And doing it with three is definitely not possible. Harry finds that while his own self-preservation skills are about as low as they can get, they’re off the fucking charts with his children, to the point that he’s kept up at night worrying he won’t be what they need, or that he won’t be able to keep them safe.

It’s Lily’s second birthday when Ginny kisses his cheek and whispers, “It’s ok for love to change. It’ll never make what we had, or how we love our kids, less important.” Harry squeezes her hand and watches his children run around the Burrow and realizes that while he’s got everything he always thought he wanted, it’s not close to what he  _ needs _ .

Consciously uncoupling turns out to be surprisingly painless in the long run. The Weasleys, Harry knows, will always be his family, and after a rough few months of awkwardness he and Ginny fall into an easy routine of co-parenting. Harry finds, to his disbelief, that they’re actually better parents to their kids when they’re not worrying about making a relationship work that simply wasn’t. Harry had been afraid the end of his marriage might weaken his relationship with his kids, but if anything it makes it stronger. He finds himself able to relax and be in the moment more when he’s with them, because he misses them so much when they’re with Ginny. 

The one place that things don’t get easier however, is traveling. When Harry needs to take the kids to the Burrow, or to see Ginny, or, fuck, even just to Tesco’s for milk, he realizes he has no idea how to get anywhere with three small kids on his own—especially not when James seems determined to run away at the earliest opportunity, Albus cries when James runs away, and Lily cries because Albus is crying. He realizes he’s got a problem when, six months after their divorce, he’s only left the house with the kids twice—both times he’d ended up crying  _ with  _ his kids by the time they got home.

So on a lazy Saturday, while Lily is napping and Albus and James are playing a rather enthusiastic game of penis fencing, Harry opens the  _ Prophet _ and sees an advertisement for a new business in London that promises to teach Wizards how to drive Muggle cars. Harry shakes his head and puts the paper away, but he can’t get the thought out of his head. He blames morbid curiosity for the fact that the next weekend, when Ginny has the kids, he ends up in London, pushing the driving school’s door open to find Draco Malfoy sitting behind the desk.

“How the fuck do you know how to drive?” Harry blurts out, face flushing.

Malfoy laughs, lifting an eyebrow and simply asking, “How the fuck  _ don’t  _ you?”

Harry has half a mind to leave. Except he’s never had much sense when it comes to Malfoy and he’ll be damned if the other man can do something he can’t, so he plops into the chair across from Malfoy and demands to be taught to drive.

The first few lessons are about as horrible as Harry expected. While he’d been in a car plenty of times, he’d never been allowed to actually touch anything. So when Malfoy tells him to switch gears Harry just stares at the gearshift, his hand curled over the top, unmoving. 

Malfoy, it turns out, is surprisingly patient, laying his hand on top of Harry’s and moving it into the correct gear before reminding him to take his foot off the break if he’d like the car to go anywhere this century. Harry doesn’t like silence, so he on their second lesson he asks Malfoy to talk, just to stop the nervous buzzing in his ears. He expects him to talk about the weather or the rising cost of petrol, but instead Malfoy fills the silence with truths. Harry rolls the windows down, confessing his own in soft whispers, and wondering if something about the open road makes it easier to leave their pasts behind them.

The days Harry doesn’t have lessons he spends far too much time wondering how Malfoy learned to handle a stick, and what other things he might be good at that Harry would’ve never guessed.

The lessons go on that way for months, until Malfoy smiles at Harry kindly one day in late August and says, “You don’t need me anymore, Potter.”

Harry realises it’s true. He doesn’t need Malfoy. But fuck does he  _ want  _ him.

Two weeks later Harry pulls up to Malfoy’s shop with a seven seater van. It’s a rather bold bright red and Harry likes that it’s got about a dozen cup holders. It’s decidedly unattractive really, and screams: “this guy has kids” and Harry thinks he likes that about it the most. 

He honks the horn and laughs when Malfoy walks out onto the pavement, looking at Harry in disbelief. The kids are screaming in the back, and Harry feels Albus’s stuffed horse hit the back of his head right as James shouts, “I gotta piss, Dad!”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Malfoy asks, leaning into the van and snorting at the chaos in the back. Harry glances in the rear view mirror and wonders where exactly Lily found a sippy cup of milk, how Albus’s window got covered in stickers, and why James always has his hands down his trousers.

“I am taking control of my life,” Harry answers, pressing the unlock button and nodding to the empty passenger seat. “Do you want to come along for a ride?”

Draco’s face breaks out into a smile. “Where exactly are you going?”

Harry waves his hand at the door, wandlessly opening it. “Thought maybe we could decide that.  _ Together _ .”

It’s nearly an hour later, while Draco is telling a rather outlandish story about peacocks that has  _ all three _ of his children in hysterics, that it occurs to Harry he didn’t just learn how to drive, he learned how to live too.

  
  



End file.
